


Plant your Hope with Good Seeds

by Williamsaysgayrights



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, lmk if I need to tag anything else, sometimes you just need to emotionally devastate your favourite and then give them therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28874238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Williamsaysgayrights/pseuds/Williamsaysgayrights
Summary: Leenik, guilt, and finding family after losing it all
Relationships: Leenik Geelo & Trystan "Tryst" Valentine, Leenik Geelo & Venton Geelo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Plant your Hope with Good Seeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Onecrazyfangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onecrazyfangirl/gifts).



> Me: i will never write a fic  
> The uwuru: hey  
> me, already typing: UGH fine
> 
> This is the result of Nico (who this fic is gifted to because they are the best) finishing the flashback episodes and reminding me how much I love leenik, and also for staying up with me to scream with me about him. 
> 
> Let me know if I need to tag anything else i am... very new to this lol
> 
> Edited by the amazing Rowan (DrowningInStarlight), who you should all go and check out their work is so good.
> 
> Title from Thistle and Weeds by Mumford and Sons because I have been listening to it nonstop

Leenik knows that the galaxy is cruel to those who aren’t dead. Running from the Empire isn’t something people do for safety, or fun. It gets people killed more often than it saves them. And yet, Venton Geelo was someone more worth saving than Leenik ever could be.

He doesn’t remember the specifics of that day in Tibannopolis - just Venton slipping away and Chartreuse begging to know where he’d gone. But at night, in his dreams, it all comes back, and Leenik remembers everything. He always wakes up shaking, trying not to wake Tryst. He doesn’t sleep too well anymore, relies on pushing himself too far on too little and passing out from exhaustion most nights. But that’s the price for those who aren’t dead in this galaxy. That’s the price for losing the people you love.

————

Leenik dreams about a night back home on Rodia, when he’d climbed onto the roof of his and Venton’s house and looked up at the stars, at how big the galaxy was, and thought about how one Rodian would never make a difference - just a meaningless blip on a radar he would never get to see. 

Venton found him up there, on the verge of tears, thinking about his place in the too-big universe, and sat down beside him, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “You okay, Nicky?”

Leenik had shrugged, and kept looking up at the sky, and Venton had sighed and looked with him. “You see those stars?” he’d said, “Every single one is a new place to explore, a new adventure for us. And one day, Nicky, we’ll go out there and see it all. Every part is going to be ours. We’ll rule the stars, Nicky, count on it.” 

At the time, Leenik had laughed, and smiled at Venton. 

This time, he wakes up aboard the Mynock with tears in his eyes and his brother's words echoing around his head. He knows how his dreams usually end - a long fall and broken promises and tearful goodbyes, the memory of Venton slipping away under guilt and misery. He’s just glad this dream was kinder - at least there's still some small mercies to grasp onto in this useless existence.

————

Sometimes Leenik can lie to himself, pretend that home isn’t a ship in the middle of space but a house with a brother waiting for him to come home. The crew of the Mynock sit around a map at the kitchen table setting up a new mission, an infiltration into an Empire-controlled facility that Leenik wasn’t paying attention to the details of. It doesn’t matter anyway - he’ll suggest getting captured, Tryst will grin at him across the table, Bacta will sigh, and they’ll go with it as usual. 

Except this time, he sees the way Venton would laugh at his suggestions, sees him across the table in place of Tryst. Leenik closes his eyes, and when he opens them, the image of Venton is gone, replaced by Lyn’s worried look and confusion on Tryst and Bacta’s faces. He excuses himself with a weak lie about going to check on Tony - he can’t face their sympathy when he just misses his family. He misses his guide through the stars. He misses his brother.

————

The mission goes wrong. Tryst gets shot, again, and it would have been fatal if Lyn hadn’t been so quick to pull them out. She and Bacta are with him in another room, keeping him alive while Leenik sits outside with Tony. Neemo took Tamlin away to distract him, so Leenik is left alone with his thoughts. He’d messed up bad this time - they’d ended up escaping across a roof, and when Tryst got shot, he’d almost fallen off, to the ground so very far below. 

Instead of helping him, Leenik had panicked. He couldn’t lose another family member, not again, not another person he'd have to watch die. But when he tried to move, he was frozen, seeing his brother in place of his friend. It took Bacta pulling Tryst up for him to start breathing again, and he still hasn’t stopped shaking.

The door opens and Bacta steps out. Leenik jumps up, and his worry must be obvious because Bacta instantly comes to reassure him. “He’s fine, just needs some rest.” 

Leenik lets himself relax, breathing for the first time in what feels like hours. Bacta doesn’t move from the doorway, and instead takes a breath. “Hey, Leenik, me and Lyn have been talking and… well, we saw you on that roof. Are you okay? Do you need to talk about anything?”

Leenik can only shrug. He can’t bring himself to explain the fact that losing two people the same way feels impossible until it happens, and Bacta sighs, not bothering to hide his concern.

“You don’t have to tell us now.” He says, as he puts his hand on Leenik’s shoulder, “I need you to know that we’re all here for you, okay? You don’t have to do this alone.” 

But Leenik isn’t listening anymore. Instead, Venton is at his side, putting his hand on his shoulder and leaning in to whisper something about the job they’re on into his ear. And Leenik laughs, carefree and truly happy, for the last time in a long time. Venton grins at him, and Leenik blinks back into reality to see Bacta frowning at him, and Leenik wishes he’d paid attention, even just to keep his family crew content.

—————

They’re all looking at him, waiting for him to explain. He can’t, they won’t understand, they’ll never— and Bacta smiles at him, and next to him Lyn does too, Tamlin looking up at Leenik from her lap. Tryst grabs his hand, squeezes it as if to say it’s okay, trust us, and something inside of him begins to stitch itself back together. He may have lost his brother, but this is his family too. They’ll understand - he knows he can do this. For Venton, and for himself.

“My brother died and I couldn’t save him.”

And there it is.

—————

Leenik wakes up in tears one night, in his bunk aboard the ship. The dream hadn’t mattered, always the same cycle of losing Venton, except this time Chartreuse had been there too. He supposes this is his payment for what he’s done, and as he sobs, he hears Tryst shift in his bunk. Leenik freezes, desperately trying to keep quiet as Tryst speaks. 

“Bad night?” he jokes, and Leenik laughs, even as it turns back into sobs. 

“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” he lies, and something inside of him breaks when Tryst comes to sit beside him. He wraps his arm around Leenik’s shoulders, and leans in close. 

“You want to talk about it?”

“About what, Tryst? It was nothing.” 

“I meant your brother.”

Something inside of Leenik screams _please, yes, someone help me,_ but everything else screams to run. He tries to stand, readying an excuse to leave when Tryst pulls him into a hug. “You don’t need to. It’s okay. I just… we all want to help you, and you know I want to know more about the guy who practically raised my best friend. I bet he was exactly like you, always getting himself captured.” 

Leenik tearfully laughs again. “No, that’s all me. Tony never—” he chokes on his words, cutting himself off. When was the last time he said his brother’s name? When was the last time that thinking of him didn’t make him feel hollow? But Tryst hugs him tighter, and Leenik lets himself relax slightly, the pain replaced by a gentle stillness. 

“He must have been great.” Tryst whispers, and Leenik nods, tears falling, wondering if the galaxy knows how much it lost when it took away Venton Geelo.

“He was.”

Eventually, Leenik cries himself to sleep, and when he wakes he sees Tryst still there, sleeping beside him. In that moment Leenik realises, for the first time in years, just how loved he is.

————

Things aren’t better. Leenik still kills people, still lies about things, still breaks down at night thinking about the people he’s lost. But now he works through it - Aava may be hunting them across the galaxy, but she makes a good book club member. They’re talking over comms, Leenik telling her about Neemo’s latest attempt at writing, and she laughs. He tells her about Venton, about finally telling his new family what happened, and she’s proud. It makes his heart ache, that someone would be proud of him that wasn’t his brother, but when she asks him when she’ll see him next, he can hear her smiling, and as the two of them fall back into their surprisingly easy friendship, he realises he doesn’t need the Force to know she isn’t lying.

Lyn was the easiest to talk to - she knows what loss feels like, and she feels it just as deeply as Leenik does. They stay up late at night talking about their families, helping each other process the loss. He never realised how similar their heartbreaks were until they bonded a little more, until they let each other see the worst parts of themselves. They make each other stronger in their grief, and Leenik is so glad that the crew of the Mynock found their missing piece before they could tear themselves apart.

Bacta asks so many questions about Venton. Leenik, at first, couldn’t answer them, choking on his tears until Bacta told him he didn’t have to say anything if he couldn’t. He knows how hard loss is - Leenik isn't the only one who feels responsible for killing a brother. Yet Bacta doesn’t judge him, doesn’t hurry him along for an answer, and when the details come spilling out of him, Bacta holds him as he cries, his own tears falling as he apologises for the loss Leenik has coped with alone since Venton’s death. 

They both collapse to their knees there in the kitchen, Leenik sobbing into Bacta’s shirt, the two of them mourning the people they couldn’t save. When they finally stop crying, Bacta looks him in the eye and tells him he’s proud of him, and Leenik feels, for the first time since the day he lost his brother, wholly and truly safe.

————

The ship lands on a beach planet far away from anyone who could bother them. The Mynock crew is finally taking a well-deserved break from running, and immediately the excitement from Tamlin is obvious. That’s good, Leenik thinks - the kid’s been through enough in his short life. 

The crew spend the day swimming, and when the sun goes down, Lyn and Bacta make a campfire. They sit there, Lyn and Bacta with Tamlin between them, and Neemo, Leenik and Tryst all piled together on the other side, Tony at Leenik’s feet. And for once, the weight of their burdens is lifted, as they sit and laugh and get to live for once without the threat of the Empire hanging over their heads. 

Eventually it’s late, and the others go inside, leaving Leenik and Tony alone. Leenik listens to the waves and thinks about how, years before, Venton had promised he’d take Leenik and Chartreuse to the beach. They’d left for Bespin the day after that, and Leenik feels irrational guilt over being the only one to make it here. 

He knows Venton would be proud of him though, for opening up to his crew, for asking for help, for being honest for once. He thinks about that night in Rodia, looking up at the stars, except this time he knows how easy it is for one person to have an impact on the galaxy. It wasn’t the last thing Venton ever taught him, but Leenik knows it’s the most important thing he could ever know.

Leenik looks up at the stars, the ship behind him and the beach laid out in front, Tony by his side, and he smiles. He thinks of his brother, and the ache lessens, piece by piece, until he knows he’ll get through this. The ache doesn’t leave - loss never goes quickly or quietly, instead becoming an easier burden to carry. Leenik knows this, and yet, as he looks to the stars, older and wiser than he ever thought he’d ever get to be, he feels like he could start to ease that burden for the first time. He stands, brushing sand off his clothes, and turns to walk back to join his family, finally safe, finally home.


End file.
